---
id: "2026-09-22-jetbrains-air-agentic-system"
url: "https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-22-jetbrains-air-agentic-system/"
as_of: "2026-10-12T07:22:00+02:00"
date: "2026-09-22"
date_precision: day
category: agents
importance: 2
confidence: high
status: [Confirmed]
sources: 5
editor: Adam Bicz
human_review: null
version: "2026-10-11"
---

As of: 2026-10-12 07:22 CEST.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code). Human editor: Adam Bicz.
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-22-jetbrains-air-agentic-system/

# JetBrains launches Air, an 'open system' for agentic development

Full title: JetBrains launches Air, an 'open system' for agentic development: agent orchestration inside its IDEs, Air Teams and Air Governance, with any ACP agent (Claude Agent, Codex, Gemini, Copilot, Junie)

On Sept 22, 2026 JetBrains introduced JetBrains Air, a set of products for agent-driven software development: Air in JetBrains IDEs (direct, run in parallel and verify agents inside IntelliJ-family IDEs), Air Teams (delivery workflows mixing developers and autonomous agents) and Air Governance (the renamed JetBrains Central: policy, audit and AI-cost control). Agents connect via the Agent Client Protocol, so Codex, Gemini, GitHub Copilot, Claude Agent and JetBrains' Junie all work. An early-access plugin for the IDEs followed in October.

## Key facts
- Announced Sept 22, 2026 on the JetBrains blog; JetBrains calls it the company's move beyond the individual developer workbench it has focused on for 26 years
- Air in IDEs EAP (October 2026): agent work in sessions, local or cloud execution, temporary worktrees for parallel tasks, tabs/terminal/chat UIs; via JetBrains Marketplace plugin or built into 2026.3 EAP builds; free Junie Lite tier, third-party subscriptions usable
- Air Governance is the former JetBrains Central (launched July 2026), whose CLI tracks agent usage and token budgets
- Background (JetBrains blog, Aug 2026): JetBrains' internal AI development spend rose about 10x in six months as developers used 3-5 AI tools a month; it moved to an enterprise Claude plan after reaching 150 Claude Code seats
- Quotes: 'AI can produce code. Organizations still have to produce software.' 'Agentic development is becoming the norm, and an IDE that keeps agents at arm's length will struggle to stay relevant.'

## What happened

JetBrains repositioned its product line around orchestrating coding agents rather than chatting with one assistant. It keeps the IDE as the
place where humans verify agent work, and it opened the system to rival agents through ACP.

## Why it matters

The largest independent IDE maker now treats multi-agent orchestration and governance of AI spend as its core product. This follows the
wider 2026 shift from AI-assisted to agent-driven software development.

## Your AI and this story

- GPT-6 Astra (training cutoff April 2026): 145 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.5 (training cutoff June 2026): 84 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 3.8 Flash (training cutoff March 2026): 175 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7 (training cutoff May 2026): 114 days after its cutoff

## Sources

1. [JetBrains: Introducing JetBrains Air (Sept 22, 2026)](https://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2026/09/22/introducing-jetbrains-air/) (blog.jetbrains.com, official)
2. [JetBrains AI blog: A new agentic experience, JetBrains Air in IDEs, EAP now open](https://blog.jetbrains.com/ai/2026/10/air-in-ides-eap/) (blog.jetbrains.com, official)
3. [JetBrains AI blog: Our first moves to get AI spend under control (Aug 2026)](https://blog.jetbrains.com/ai/2026/08/our-first-moves-to-get-ai-spend-under-control/) (blog.jetbrains.com, official)
4. [InfoWorld: JetBrains unveils JetBrains Air for agentic software development](https://www.infoworld.com/article/4225681/jetbrains-unveils-jetbrains-air-for-agentic-software-development.html) (infoworld.com, press)
5. [The New Stack: JetBrains Air](https://thenewstack.io/jetbrains-air-agents-ide/) (thenewstack.io, press)

## Changes

- 2026-10-11 (filed): Created (found on blog.jetbrains.com/ai while checking lab pages)

## Related

- 2026-10-08: [JetBrains releases Mellum2.1, an Apache-2.0 12B MoE coding model whose SWE-bench Verified score jumps from 2% to 47% after RL in real repositories](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-08-jetbrains-mellum2-1/index.md)